On this episode of Coaches Interrupted, I sat down with fellow coaches Spencer and Tyson to talk about the CrossFit season: whether training camps should be hosting and programming semifinals, what to do about workout leaks, the new 18-19 division, and why a competition ladder matters for athletes who aren’t at the top.
The short version: Camps hosting semifinals is good for the sport. Camps programming an event their own athletes compete in is where the line should be, and it needs to be a rule, not an honor system. Since leaks will always happen, releasing workouts a few weeks early would level the field without changing much.
| Question | Where we landed |
|---|---|
| Should camps host semifinals? | Yes. They have the money and the infrastructure to put on a great event. |
| Should camps program them? | Not if their own athletes are competing. Bias is unavoidable. |
| How do you handle leaks? | Announce workouts a few weeks out so nobody has a meaningful head start. |
| One shared event across all semifinals? | Underrated. It makes results comparable. |
| The new 18-19 division? | A big win for young men who need a few years to get strong enough. |
Should training camps host CrossFit semifinals?
Yes. Outside of CrossFit itself, the camps are the ones making the most money in this space, so they’re the ones who can afford to reinvest in it. Mayhem’s semifinal was one of the best things to watch all season, from the live stream to the venue to the setup. Rogue is the only other organization that can put on a show like that.
If more camps competed to put on great events, the whole sport would benefit. High tide raises all boats.
Where’s the line on programming?
My take: if your athletes are competing at an event, your organization shouldn’t be writing the workouts. And I’ll be honest about my bias. If someone knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to program a semifinal, I’d say yes. If nobody’s stopping you, why wouldn’t you?
That’s why it has to be in the rule book. I’m not faulting the companies. You’re asking them to rely on their own integrity, and even people with the best intentions have a bias. A camp’s programming style is going to show up in its event. Its athletes have been training that style all year.
There’s a home-field advantage too. You’d have a hard time convincing me a camp’s athletes had never run the 5K route at their own facility.
Isn’t the sponsor allowed some advantage?
Some, yes. These are two separate conversations: money and marketing, and athlete fairness.
- Money and marketing: If you’re paying for the event and the broadcast, you’ve earned the right to promote your programs on it. People complain about the advertising and then don’t want to pay for a streaming subscription either. Somebody has to pay for it.
- Athlete fairness: If some athletes could have prepared for specific workouts weeks ahead and others couldn’t, that’s a real problem, whether or not it happened.
What about workout leaks?
They happen everywhere, not just at camp-run events. Coaches know people. Information gets out. Even without anyone saying a workout out loud, a coach who knows GHDs are coming can quietly program more of them.
One fix: release the workouts ahead of time for everyone. Even three weeks out minimizes the advantage of a leak.
For most events, early notice wouldn’t change much. If you know a 1RM back squat or a long box step-over chipper is coming, your broad fitness won’t change in a few weeks. A high-skill event, like something on the rings, is different. There, extra prep time matters.
Should every semifinal share one event?
I like it, and I think it’s underrated. When every semifinal ran the same heavy Isabelle, you could actually compare athletes across events, even with differences in equipment and conditions.
The downside is spectators get bored of it fast. Our sport has a low tolerance for repetition. Track and field runs the same 400m forever. I’d want the shared event to be something more balanced than a barbell sprint.
Is the new 18-19 age division a good idea?
Yes, especially for young men. Female teens can jump straight into the elite field. Male teens almost never can, because they’re not strong enough yet. Even the best teen boys usually need a few years after aging out to put on enough strength to qualify as individuals.
That’s a tough sell for an 18-year-old who just qualified for the teen Games and is now told to wait four years. The new division gives them something to chase in the meantime, and it gives event organizers another division to host.
Does redoing Open workouts all week help?
With workouts now released on Wednesdays, athletes get more time. That’s good. But the idea that doing a workout five or six times in a week will meaningfully change your score is mostly false. You usually learn something on the first attempt, and the second is marginally better.
Hard pill to swallow: if you’re doing a workout over and over all week, you’re probably not making quarterfinals anyway.
How should you handle someone beating your score?
Tyson put it well: when someone beats you, it shows you what’s possible. It’s the four-minute-mile idea. It widens your sense of what you can do instead of being a reason to feel worse about your score.
For competitors, the information is the point. You’re better off knowing your placement will be worse than you hoped, because now you can decide whether to redo it.
What should a coach say when a score isn’t good enough?
The truth. One of the coaches told an athlete his first attempt wasn’t going to cut it, and that he needed to go unbroken on the deadlifts. The athlete redid it, went 20 seconds faster, and moved up 30-40 spots on the leaderboard.
You have to be honest and still have compassion. Our athletes try hard. They usually already know when they bombed one. But athletes are paying for a realistic outlook on what it takes to reach their goal, not a cheerleader. Honest feedback builds more trust than blowing smoke.
What changes for teams?
From what’s been announced, team workouts are released in January and events apply to be team qualifiers. The minimum number of teams looks low, which could water down what qualifying means. A lot depends on how much flexibility event organizers get: a fixed list of movements and standards, or room to adapt to their own equipment and vision.
Why does a competition ladder matter?
Tyson walked through the World Fitness Project’s plan: its series events act as qualifiers for one big final across elite, RX, intermediate, masters, and team divisions.
The appeal is the ladder. In the CrossFit season, the jumps from quarterfinals to an in-person semifinal to the Games are huge. A system with intermediate, RX, and elite steps gives athletes smaller, more realistic jumps and more reasons to compete in person.
The tradeoff is logistics. Big events with lots of divisions often make programming compromises for the top athletes, and long multi-day events wear everyone out.
Follow the coaches
- Spencer: @spencercoaches
- Tyson: @tysonmaherr
- Ben: @ben.wise
